Is it time to retire your website?

Nov 17 2017 Can you hear that coughing sound? As a Sydney website design company, we recognise it. It’s that awkward, toe circle inducing moment where you might be too embarrassed to show your website.

It’s OK. We’ve seen this problem before. That slightly shy sweep away from the website because the information is lean, the design is daggy, and it’s been a while since you had faith in its reliability. A lot of government departments, NFPs and big business face exactly this problem every day.

Never fear, Sydney website design company Webcoda is here! Let us take you through what you need to evaluate when considering website retirement

Crashes, loading issues and time outs

The first sign to any Sydney website design company that things are going wrong is that you find it hard to access, login to and/or use basic functionality in a website.

This one may seem like a no brainer, but you’d be surprised how many organisations make do with websites that are less than reliable. Think of it as the syndrome that keeps you driving an old car that is hard to start in the morning. Or your favourite jumper that has more holes than it should.

Getting in and out of the situation is the tough part. We continue usually because of the comfortable familiarity and there is part of us that doesn’t want to spend the brain space on the epic task of finding something new. Don’t even start us on getting to know it phase as well!

This is not something you can keep as a long-term strategy because the harder it is for your staff to use the website, the more out of date it will become. And your customers lack the patience to put up with faults. They will go elsewhere.

A few issues that might not mean a new website is on the cards are you could do with a hosting upgrade. It may not be configured properly with space allocation, something a developer, web master or hosting company may be able to fix. Some hosts become unreliable over time, so perhaps this is a consideration. Or you may benefit from reducing the size of files on the website. Common culprits for slowing a website include photos, videos, scripts and applications.

There is of course old age and increased capability. If you are getting more traffic, need to host extra content and have more features running, it’s probably better to use the opportunity to review your website.

The bottom line is if people can’t access your website for any reason, it’s not much point.

Automation hasn’t hit you yet

One of the coolest thing about being in a Sydney website design company is watching the automation revolution unfold. There are so many ways to crack the online customer puzzle efficiently these days.

At Webcoda, we’re excited by chat bots, virtual reality and artificial intelligence and the leaps and bounds it’s taken in the last two years. Being able to provide such a seamless and strong customer service experience while automating common processes for consistency is a great way to take your business to the next level.

You don’t have to be riding this crest of a wave to feel like you are missing out though! The absence of the following may signal it’s time for a website upgrade:

Are you still relying on third parties to update your content for you to make promotions work?

Do you have to manually add new members, sales data, customer logins and/or escalate the addition of new staff members to IT due to complexity?

When it’s time to upgrade your website, technically or otherwise, does it mean a lockdown of your team and a big event the company must prepare for?

Are your customers finding it increasingly difficult to access your content because images don’t load, and flash is a prominent feature on your website?

Does your lack of security turn customers away on a regular basis via their virus software? Or do you worry about the information you store?

The content management issues are perfect CMS territory and not something you should be putting up with. Using design elements such as flash, the upgrade woes and security issues probably mean it’s better for you to rethink the design and development of your website.

Whatever the case, you shouldn’t be stuck with manual processing and content management or IT bottlenecks to perform basic tasks. Nor should you be raising red flags with virus software due to your website. It’s both wasted labour and time. Not to mention customer opportunities, sales and relationship building.

It looks and feels out of date

Your website is only as good as the information it’s providing and the traffic it’s attracting. We all know there is good retro and bad retro. Good retro is where you’re playing with the old themes to bring a little magic and whimsy to a customer. That’s like roller-skates, big beards, milk bars and ironic tee shirts. Bad retro is when your website looks overlooked, dated and a home for people that gave up caring a while ago.

Our Sydney website design company is proud to work as an official Kentico partner because we can steer out customers towards a robust and user-friendly content management system (CMS). A CMS is a game changer. It allows your staff to update content and imagery to keep your customers informed. It also helps keep your design looking fresher for longer.

A few things that really make your website look out of date are:

Your logo and branding look different to other marketing material

Footers and other information that have old dates for copyright and content. Google also picks up on this as a ranking signal

Old information and disused blogs

Images that are out of date

The use of ugly clip up, vectors and what can only be described as PowerPoint hell

Awards that proudly proclaim you won something in 2013 on your landing page

A lack of video and mixed media to support your client education aims

The choice of fonts as well as fonts that are hard to read through size issues and the choice

A lack of mobile responsiveness and/or restrictions on what devices you can view it

The reason why web design companies will advise you to stay fresh in the design stakes is that out of date sends the wrong message. Psychologically, it sends the message that you may be out of date as a company.

Or that you don’t care about your marketing or customer presentation. It can even look like the website is alive, but the business is long gone. This all influences a customer’s impression of whether you are up to the task at hand.

The key here is to look and feel relevant and up to date.

Your online appearance matters. Get used to it

We like to think that we’re all delving deep into the gooey centre of an organisation to gain the true essence. But it’s simply not true. Humans love the web because we’re visual creatures. We love seeing things that connect to use visually. It helps with recall, trust and our ability to access a website. Therefore, it’s important to give a professional web experience that doesn’t make you look like you’ve been dug out of a museum.

Want to discover whether your website needs to retire? You know what to do. Get in touch with Webcoda, a proud Kentico toting Sydney website design company!

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